Sunday, December 14, 2014

Just Politics - A Magpie Tale

Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville by Robert Doisneau, 1950. The setting is the square in front of the City Hotel, which is Paris' City Hall, seen in the background. Le baiser means the kiss. Sold to Life Magazine, this photo became an internationally recognised symbol of young love in Paris. The identity of the couple remained a mystery until 1992.

Photo chosen by Tess as a writing prompt for this week's The Mag You can click on the numbered links found there to see how other people responded.

Just Politics

Don't you look at me
with my book bag, my cardboard
case covered in false
leathery binding.
Wearing my beret, leaving
City Hall, I have
this effrontery,
this kiss in my face. Maybe
it takes the highlight
off me though, and soon
Paris' City Hall explodes
with our special gift.
My nine million francs
will get me by for a while
still. What has he got
I don't, the bastard?

I saw (and read a bit about this photo) in an article about V-J Day in Times Square and other famous kisses. And ever since, I've been wondering why the woman standing to the left of the couple looks so upset.

The View From The Northern Wall

Some years ago my poetry took on a mythic flavor and I became a character in my own poems, a mage, "the man of the Northern Wall". This apellation is not completely fictional. My middle name is Noordwal, a Dutch term for north wall, though in current Dutch it mainly means north bank as in riverbank. I was told that an ancestor, a Portugese Jew escaping the Inquisition, settled in a small Dutch town and took this name from where he settled, near the north wall of the town. I have thought for a long time that -wal meant wall, think my mother told me that. A linguist might say that my usage is no longer common, is an older usage, but then the Inquisition happened in Portugal a few centuries ago, right around the time the Moors lost control of the Iberian Peninsula and the Jews lost the modest protection given them by Islam. Now I write as this mage, my poetry persona.